This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 24th, 2008 at 6:15 pm and is filed under Autism Information, Autism Research. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Art, Music, and Autism
, 09 24th, 2008
Art and music have been effective components of autism therapy for many years. Both assist people with autistic spectrum disorders with expression of their feelings, allowing them to communicate fluently despite possible verbal challenges in nonthreatening media. Art therapy is fun, creative, and encourages development of fine motor skills. For example, working with clay helps strengthen the muscles that are used in handwriting.
Like art, music is a nonthreatening, nonverbal medium that is effective in the development of speech. The range of speech capabilities among autistic children is large, ranging from no speech at all to some speech, often monotonic and characterized by a lack of expression. A great deal of autism research has concluded that autistic children are unusually sensitive to music. Some have perfect pitch and can play musical instruments exceptionally well, but music in a therapeutic setting is also adaptable to nonmusical goals. Since autistic children sometimes sing rather than speaking, speech can be improved through vocal music activities. Songs with simple words, phrases, and even nonsense syllables can assist the autistic child’s language skills. Word phrases and songs presented with visual and tactile clues can expedite this process, while other children respond meaningfully when both questions and answers are framed as songs. Singing can also reduce the monotonic cadence that characterizes the speech of some autistic children. Since singing phrases a way to put words together and remember them, it can be a vital building block to communication for children with autistic spectrum disorders.
October 10th, 2008 at 10:25 pm
Art, Music, and Autism | Help With Autism…
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